Child Development

programs were immediately withdrawn after these
crises were over. In the 1960s, educational day-care
programs, such as Head Start (which began in 1965),
were established to compensate for disadvantaged
home environments. In contrast to day nurseries,
which were established to make up for home environ-
ments that were viewed as poor because of deficien-
cies on behalf of the parents, the home environments
were seen as disadvantaged due to factors beyond the
parent’s control such as poverty and discrimination in
the 1960s. The focus of the programs in this later era
was on educational intervention and increasing
school readiness to overcome these factors. In the
1980s and 1990s, mothers who used day care were
conflicted and felt pressured to stay home and work.
As maternal employment becomes more normative,
societal views may continue to shift.

Conclusion

In conclusion, day care is an important issue in
the United States given the increasing numbers of
working mothers. Given the low prevalence of high
quality care and the potential effects of low quality
care, an important task for workers in early childhood
is to increase the availability of high quality care. In
addition, parents who choose to use day care must
carefully search for and select high quality care for
their children.

See also: AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS; PRESCHOOL

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Kotch, Jonathan B., and Donna Bryant. ‘‘Effects of Day Care on the
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      Daniel J. Bauer

DEATH

The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once said,

‘‘Childhood is the kingdom where no one ever dies.’’

This can be read in two ways: either children never

encounter death or they never die. Many Americans

rigidly adhere to such mythologies, as childhood

death is now a relatively rare event, so that the proba-

bility of an infant surviving to age fifteen is close to

99 percent and life expectancy at birth is seventy-nine

years. By contrast, in 1900, a couple faced a fifty-fifty

chance that one of their three children would die be-

fore they grew up.

Because of the strong desire to spare children un-

necessary anguish, many adults avoid discussing

dying and death with them. ‘‘Why take away their in-

nocence?’’ and ‘‘They’ll find out soon enough, when

they are older,’’ are typical justifications for this. Be-

cause of such denial of death, many adults assume

that children do not think about death, should not at-

tend funerals, and are not capable of grieving over

loss. When a child is unexpectedly thrown into an en-

counter with death, such as when a pet or grandpar-

ent dies, frequently no explanation accompanies the

experience, or euphemisms and metaphors (e.g.,

‘‘Grandma is having a long sleep’’) are invoked that

may promote even more confusion and anxiety for

the child. Fortunately, recognition of the importance

of learning and educating about dying and death has

begun to open up meaningful dialogues and has led

to significant research findings.

The Development of a Concept of Death

When one looks and listens carefully, one learns

that children are very interested and curious about

death. It is one of their first intellectual puzzles that

is played out whenever they see a dead bug on the

windshield; when they engage in the game of ‘‘here’’

and ‘‘not here’’ in peekaboo; or when they shoot a tar-

get dead with the shotgun blast of their finger. Yet,

a mature understanding of death, involving a number

of components, is accomplished only along with an

overall conceptual development about how things in

the world work. Most adults and older children un-

derstand that death is universal and inevitable; all

DEATH 113